lo ladies, the birthday

That's Miriam, front and center. She would turn 62 the next day. There were seven of us (with photographers in the crowd, usually one was missing from the picture.) We didn't know one another very well. Most of us had just met in Kathmandhu. On this day we were flying to Pokara, before doing a fairly arduous hike up the Kali Gandaki Valley to the Kingdom of Lo. 

  We were staying on the lake, but headed for the main drag and restaurant row for dinner. We would stop at a place and say, "This looks good." But Miriam said, "No, no, I don't like this place." This happened like four times, and then rest of us were starting to wonder how we would be able to tolerate her for the next few weeks if she was going to be s difficult. 

   "This looks good," said Miriam finally.

    It looked the same as all the other places she had just rejected. 

    We went in, ordered and ate dinner, and then the waiter arrived bearing a cake with candles. 

    It was Miriam's birthday, and she had gone in advance and ordered a cake there, on her daughter's orders. Hence the certain restaurant. 

    Oh, we laughed.

   And it was not the last of Miriam's birthdays we were to celebrate. In fact, we celebrated one today!

    We did her 80th. And Doro and I did these subsequently.

And today it was Doro and Keri and I at Miriam's apartment on the Upper West Side. That, as someone pointed out, was a Lo Ladies quorum. Miriam is turning 92 this year, 30 years after we met.